Peter Boizot: Pizza Express founder whose chic take on fast food became a high street fixture

He democratised going to restaurants and gave many their first authentic taste of the ‘simple round object from Naples’

Boizot marks 40 years of the chain at its first outlet, on London’s Wardour Street, in 2005 (PA)

Peter Boizot, who has died aged 89, was a philanthropist and entrepreneur who worked as a toy salesman, deckhand, barrow boy, theatrical entrepreneur, and owner of Peterborough United FC. However, it will be as “Mr Pizza” that he will be remembered after he established what would become the Pizza Express chain in the heart of London in 1965 – after borrowing £100.

Credited with changing eating habits in the UK, his maverick yet innovative approach revolutionised the casual dining sector, giving customers their first taste of authentic, individually crafted Italian pizza, and arguably starting the nation’s love affair with the pizzeria.

Initially employing mainly Italians and some Portuguese staff, his restaurants were full of energy; clean, with a clear and simple menu. The coup de grace was the novelty of food being prepared in front of the customers by staff in Italian-style uniforms.

With very little advertising, which Boizot deemed unnecessary, Pizza Express flourished and relied on innovation and word-of-mouth to attract punters.

Within two years a second restaurant was opened and further success followed. By now Boizot was friends with Italian interior designer and restaurateur Enzo Apicella, who captured Boizot’s vision for his eateries. Apicella, who died in October, designed 70 Pizza Express establishments.

Boizot made Pizza Express more than just a pizza restaurant, he was always trying to innovate; he introduced Peroni beer to the UK, fused jazz and pizza with Pizza Express Jazz Club in Dean Street, which played host to Sting, Ella Fitzgerald, Amy Winehouse, Norah Jones and Jamie Cullum, and continues to recognise new and upcoming talent.

He involved the brand in supporting a number of interests as diverse as jazz, hockey (a big favourite of his) and saving Venice. He introduced Pizza Veneziana in 1975, donating 5p of its price (which increased over the years) to the Venice in Peril fund. These donations helped to raise more than £2m towards the city’s restoration and flood defences.

In 1993, Boizot floated the company and, thereafter, he began investing in a range of ventures, the first of which was the purchase of one of his favourite haunts, the Great Northern Hotel in Peterborough, where he lived for a time.

Although he sold the company in 1996 for an estimated £40m, Boizot remained its life president. In July 2014 China’s Hony Capital bought Pizza Express for £900m. From its humble Soho beginnings, Boizot saw the company expand to more than 500 outlets worldwide in 13 countries, including China and India. While sitting in his Hyde Park restaurant, with a twinkle in his eyes, he once reflected: “To think it [my wealth] is all down to a simple round object from Naples.”

With no business mantra, and never having drawn up a single business plan, he once remarked he had never been driven by profits and was lucky to have earned so much over the years, enabling him to follow his passions. “Eccentric possibly, eclectic certainly,” is how The Independent described him in 1997. Boizot described his butterfly approach to life as “enlightened self-interest”.

Born to the north of Peterborough in the residential area of Walton in 1929, Peter James Boizot was the son of Gaston, an insurance inspector of French origin, and Susannah, a housewife. He also had a younger sister called Mary. Growing up, money was tight and holidays were mostly constrained to nearby Norfolk towns like Snettisham and Hunstanton. Cromer was once mooted but was deemed by his father “too posh for the likes of us”.

In 1934, while on a holiday to Scotland, a five-year-old Peter was entreated to become a lifelong veggie. During the trip his father had told tall stories of monster cows prowling the countryside, and when his mother suggested eating steak, Peter was repulsed. He was a difficult eater and, despite the normal cakes and sweets, meals were restricted, due to his fussiness, to chips, baked beans and Heinz tomato soup.

Educated at King’s School, where he was head boy, Boizot excelled and particularly enjoyed cycling, hockey and football – all of which he maintained throughout his life. Aged 18, he was selected by his headmaster to go to an affluent family in Florence to teach their children English. While there, he enjoyed a diet of pasta and vegetables, but just before his return in December 1948 the family made a pizza specially for him. He recalled: “I thought it was the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten – and of course it changed my life.”

As a second lieutenant during national service he was in Egypt for 17 months. A highlight he recalled was making a motorbike journey, alone, without a licence, hundreds of miles across the desert, to deliver an urgent message to the HQ in Alexandria.

Back home, he took up his Cambridge scholarship and graduated with a history degree in 1953. He then joined Tiger Toys, a toy manufacturer in the West Country, as a travelling salesman to retail outlets. This was cut short when, after a chance meeting with a ship’s captain, while on business in London, he made a snap decision and became a deckhand on vessels sailing to France.

Over the next 10 years he had a menagerie of jobs in Europe, including teaching English in Paris, working for Nestlé’s publicity department in Switzerland, manning a souvenir barrow selling postcards in Rome, and working in the Associated Press’s Rome news photography department. Boizot returned regularly to visit his parents but was dismayed at being unable to find pizza in England.

Over the years he purchased a number of venues including Pizza on the Park, Hyde Park Corner, the Soho-based exclusive restaurant Kettner’s, Condotti in Mayfair and a pub in Maida Vale. He also stood as a Liberal candidate for Peterborough at the general elections of February and October 1974, finishing third.

After gradually selling off his shares in Pizza Express, he wanted to put something back into his home town. He invested in what used to be the Odeon cinema he frequented as a boy, and took over one of his great loves in 1997 – Peterborough United. His investment saved them and he sank more than £7.5m of his personal fortune during a one year spell. He also gave £100,000 to Peterborough Cathedral Choir in which he used to sing as a boy.

In January 2002, Boizot encountered cashflow problems and sold Kettner’s, which he’d bought in 1980, to Pizza Express for £2.5m. He later sold 800 items of his beloved art collection, including pieces by Sir Peter Blake and Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, raising more than £70,000 when his hotel was put up for sale.

In 2011 he started raising money necessary to see Frith Street, site of Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, pedestrianised, with 25p from each Bellini cocktail and St Paul’s Pizza sold in Kettner’s going to the Soho Community Environment Fund.

Linking all his passions was a privately distributed, glossy monthly magazine Boz, its title taken from his nickname. It featured pieces about the preservation of Soho, Peterborough, art, hockey, food, lots of jazz and columns from friends.

Boizot received a number of awards, including an MBE in 1986 and an Italian knighthood in 1996, in recognition of political and public service. He wrote the well-received Pizza Express Cookbook (1976), and his autobiography, Mr Pizza and All That Jazz, was published in 2014.

Although he never married, which was a huge disappointment to him, he enjoyed trying to find Miss Right. He recalled: “There was no shortage of girlfriends, though, and that might mean that somewhere out there I’ve got some children, I just don’t know!”

Peter Boizot, Pizza Express founder, born 16 November 1929, died 5 December 2018